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2 Monitoring Dell Force10 Ethernet Switches Using Dell SupportAssist | Version 1.0 | December 2013

THIS WHITE PAPER IS FOR INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY, AND MAY CONTAIN TYPOGRAPHICAL ERRORS AND

TECHNICAL INACCURACIES. THE CONTENT IS PROVIDED AS IS, WITHOUT EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF

ANY KIND.

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Table of contents Introduction ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 5

1 Discovery and inventory .............................................................................................................................................................. 6

1.1 Prerequisites ........................................................................................................................................................................ 6

1.2 Discovery range configuration ........................................................................................................................................ 6

2 Discovering Force10 Ethernet switches ................................................................................................................................... 9

3 Configuring SupportAssist .......................................................................................................................................................... 12

3.1 Default Credentials ........................................................................................................................................................... 12

3.2 Custom Credentials .......................................................................................................................................................... 13

4 Alerts in OpenManage Essentials .............................................................................................................................................. 15

4.1 Alert threshold .................................................................................................................................................................... 15

5 Case creation and execution of the collection tool ............................................................................................................. 17

6 Configuring periodic collection ............................................................................................................................................... 18

7 Sending system logs manually (collection on demand) ......................................................................................................19

Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................................................................19


Introduction

Dell SupportAssist is a remote support application providing proactive support capabilities that help

identify and resolve issues faster and more accurately. It integrates with Dell OpenManage Essentials, and

enables transparent visibility to your server, storage, and networking infrastructure, and proactively

identifies hardware failures in your IT environment.

SupportAssist is designed with automated proactive features to help streamline support process steps,

maintain your systems’ health, and identify hardware failures faster and more accurately.

The key features of SupportAssist include:

Remote monitoring for critical hardware alerts.

Automatic collection of diagnostic logs and configuration information.

Automatic case creation and alert notifications through email.

Proactive support from a ProSupport Engineer, who has the information required to start resolving

your case immediately.

SupportAssist gives you more oversight and control over your environment without the hassle of manual

processes and more time. Equipping your OpenManage Essentials server with SupportAssist is voluntary,

and results in improved support, products, and services designed to meet your needs.

OpenManage Essentials interacts with supported devices that are to be monitored and receives SNMP

traps. The SNMP traps are periodically retrieved as alerts by the SupportAssist application. The alerts are

filtered using various policies to decide if the alerts qualify for creating a new support case or updating an

existing support case.

All qualifying alerts are securely sent to the SupportAssist server hosted by Dell, for a creating a new

support case or updating an existing support case. After the support case is created or updated, the

SupportAssist application runs the appropriate collection tools on the devices that generated the alerts,

and uploads the log collection to Dell.

The information in the log collection is used by Dell technical support to troubleshoot the issue and

provide an appropriate solution.

This technical white paper provides information about monitoring Dell Force10 Ethernet switches using

Dell SupportAssist. The following are the high-level areas covered:

Steps to perform discovery and inventory

Configuring credentials in SupportAssist for Force10 Ethernet switches

Alert processing

Case creation in SupportAssist for an alert

Sending system logs manually


1 Discovery and inventory Discovery and inventory aids understanding of what hardware and software are installed across your

organization and is the most basic step to effective systems management. Areas such as license

compliance, health monitoring, security and upgrades, and migrations all require the networked hardware

to be available to the System Administrator on a single console to help ease the process. OpenManage

Essentials provides these capabilities to initialize the discovery and inventory process and perform required

actions on these devices.

1.1 Prerequisites The following are the prerequisites for performing discovery and inventory:

Credentials: The discovery process in OpenManage Essentials communicates with the Force10 Ethernet

switches using SNMP protocol. You may also be required to provide the SNMP community string during

the discovery process.

Force10 device setup: There are a few settings to be performed on the managed nodes to make them

discoverable over the network. For more information, see the Making Your Environment Manageable with Dell OpenManage Essentials technical whitepaper at delltechcenter.com/ome.

Dell OpenManage Server Administrator (OMSA): OMSA should be installed on all the systems that are

required to be managed with OpenManage Essentials.

1.2 Discovery range configuration This section provides information about providing a discovery range for discovering devices in

OpenManage Essentials.

i. In OpenManage Essentials, navigate to Manage Discovery and Inventory.

The Discovery Range Summary page is displayed.

ii. Under Discovery Ranges, right-click All Ranges, and click Add Discovery Range.

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4 Alerts in OpenManage Essentials Dell OpenManage Essentials administrators can monitor the health of discovered assets through a

centralized, easy-to-use dashboard and through automated, custom alerts. The dashboard provides an

at-a-glance view and a scoreboard displaying the health and well-being of the infrastructure.

4.1 Alert threshold The alert threshold specifies under what conditions the alert should cause a support case to be created (or

appended). The syntax resembles a programming method and optionally may take additional arguments

to refine its behavior.

Currently there are two possible values:

FirstMatch () – The case should be created/appended each time this alert is detected.

Occurs (count,duration) – The case should be created/appended only when the alert has occurred

so many times within a specified duration.

The duration argument of the Occurs threshold defines a relative time in days, hours, minutes, and

seconds and is formatted as dd-hh:mm:ss. The following are some examples of the Occurs threshold and

their descriptions

Table 1 Examples of Occurs threshold

Example Description

Occurs (5,1-00:00:00) Create/append a case if the alert occurs 5 or more times within the previous 1 day

Occurs (3,0-05:00:00) Create/append case if the alert occurs 3 or more times within the previous 5 hours

Occurs (8,1-12:00:00) Create/append case if the alert occurs 8 or more times within the previous day and a half

Valid duration values – Days: 0 to 365, Hours: 0 to 23, Minutes: 0 to 59, Seconds: 0 to 59

Policies which specify the Occurs () threshold instruct the SupportAssist server to retain the timestamps of

each alert. With each new alert occurrence, the SupportAssist server evaluates if the number of alerts

within the duration exceeds the count, and if so, creates/appends the case. The timestamps are discarded

to ensure the Occurs () threshold will not append the case until an entirely new set of alerts are received

which fulfills the criteria.


Table 2 Examples of Policy file details

Policy Property Description Example

clientType The type of client reporting the alert “OME”

eventSourceType The source of the alert “.1.3.6.1.4.1.6027.3.1.1.4”

trapId The trap identifier “32”

eventId The event identifier (null)

severity Severity of the alert “MAJOR”

description Description of the alert “The agents generate this trap when a power supply major alarm is issued.”

autoCase Indicates if the alert should be processed

True

alertThreshold Policy filter when the case is created “FIRST MATCH()”

deltaSeverity Severity code passed to delta “3”

Only alerts with Enterprise OID .1.3.6.1.4.1.6027.3.1.1.4 for clientType OME will be processed as alerts from

Force10 Ethernet switches.

SupportAssist processes all the alerts with Force10 OIDs, but only some specified alerts are considered to

create a case (Service Requests or SR) provided they have Auto Case as “Yes” as shown in the following

policy table.

Table 3 Policy table with threshold

Name Description Trapid Eventid Severity Autocase Alert threshold Resolution type

1.3.6.1.4.1.6027.3.1.1.4 Force10 32 (null) Major 1 First Match() FA

1.3.6.1.4.1.6027.3.1.1.4 Force10 36 (null) Minor 1 First Match() FA

1.3.6.1.4.1.6027.3.1.1.4 Force10 37 (null) Warning 1 Occurs(10,0-05:00:00) FA

1.3.6.1.4.1.6027.3.1.1.4 Force10 39 (null) Warning 1 Occurs(10,0-05:00:00) FA

1.3.6.1.4.1.6027.3.1.1.4 Force10 43 (null) Major 1 Occurs(5,00-01:00:00) FA

1.3.6.1.4.1.6027.3.1.1.4 Force10 44 (null) Info 1 Occurs(5,00-01:00:00 FA

1.3.6.1.4.1.6027.3.1.1.4 Force10 45 (null) Critical 1 First Match() FA

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Documents

Monitoring Dell Force10 Ethernet Switches Using …...Dell OpenManage Essentials administrators can monitor the health of discovered assets through a centralized, easy-to-use dashboard